A Stranger in Olondria: A Novel Read online

  Chapter Seven

  From a Somnambulist’s Notebook

  Our islands are full of ghosts.

  I wrote those words. I scribbled them down after I had found my way back to the Hotel Urloma, after waking on the steps of a brothel in the city of Bain, a haunted man. Three words in Olondrian. In Kideti, they are five.

  I wrote in a paperbound record book, a book I have with me still. Soft leather covers, a string to wrap around the whole and keep it shut. I had purchased the book to keep track of my transactions in the market, and I used it for this purpose for several weeks. So there are pages with lines of Kideti numbers, bold compartments, rows of accounts. And then on the last few sheets this eruption, this disorder. Newspaper clippings stuffed inside, hurried copies from the books in Yedov’s library. A true mirror of my life in Bain.

  Our islands are full of ghosts. They come from the flowers and from the water. They are those who are always waiting, outside on the paths. There are the Sea Dead and the Rotted Dead whose bodies have never been burned, the Poisoned Dead, and the Animal Dead—the ghosts of the sacred beasts. They are the reason we walk under trees, avoid the shapes made by the moonlight, never toss seeds carelessly over our shoulders in the darkness. They haunt the hills and crossroads and are implacable on the beaches where the Sea Dead hold their ragged, ungraceful dances at festival time. If you see one you must kiss your fingers and pray, you must back away slowly, and above all you must never ask its name. Your house must be purified with smoke, and you must have smoke in your hair, wear strips of charmed leather about your ribs, underneath your clothes, rub your chest and neck with peppermint oil, avoid the ocean, keep fires burning close to you, and chew dried pumpkin-flower. If you are pursued, then you must consult the doctors, who will treat you with hot needles, purges, the constant rattling of gourds. I have heard them chanting from a nearby house: “Take back your beads, Ghost, take back your fan, take back your sandals.”

  I have seen her three times—perhaps four.

  First, on the steps. Then in the warren of streets where I wandered, asking strangers the way to the canal. She bloomed into life in a nearby wall, like a cancer of the stone. I threw myself backward, screaming, and collapsed in a gutter.

  I must have lost consciousness for a time. The stealthy hands of a beggar woke me. He abandoned my pockets when I sat up, and showed me his broken teeth. His eyes were crushed dried figs. “Tobacco,” he hissed, tugging the hem of my shirt. “Tobacco for the beloved of the gods.”

  In the Street of Owls I saw her again: the ghost of the Kiemish girl. She looked at me with the eyes of one born into the country of herons. With a lift of her hand she dispelled my reason; I gibbered into the sunlight; I ran, shrieked, struck my head against walls, seeking the merciful dark. My terror was stronger than shame. When I awoke again, a couple were passing me, and the woman twitched her skirt away from my prone body. Her dress was pale pink, her hair secured with pins. “Shocking,” she said, and her companion replied: “It is to be expected, after the Feast.”

  Is there some connection between the Feast of Birds and this apparition? I wish I could find one of my companions from that night—one of the Wings. Are they all haunted like me? I cannot believe it. There were so many of them. Even here in the hotel I would hear their screams.

  I said I had seen her “perhaps four times.” Now I must call them five.

  I was not sure, at first; I thought it was only a nightmare caused by the horrible events of the Feast. Now I know she pursues me when I sleep.

  I have seen her again. There is no escape. I pace the room, boil coffee, drink glass after scalding glass. I speak to myself in the mirror. I say: “Wake up. Open your eyes. Look at me. My curse on you if you bow your head.”

  Sten has told Yedov that I am suffering from a fever.

  Sten knows all. I told him at once. I said: “It is a jeptow.”

  He kissed his fingertips at the word. Jeptow—a wild spirit, a ghost, a citizen of the ghost country, jepnatow-het. But he is not superstitious. He keeps to the quiet and ordered religion of his forefathers who have served my family since the War of the Crows. As I write he is tending a fire in a clay bowl, burning fenugreek against ghosts, and rosemary, “the salt herb,” a prayer to the winds.

  What is she?

  She arrives in chimes. The air tolls and bellows. Now I understand that light has a sound. She is an absolute stranger to me: she is stranger than the effulgent sea, more alien than the pale coast, the foreign city. In vain I sob: “Ghost, begone, your hair is under the mountain”—the chant of frightened children under far trees.

  “Help,” I scream. To no one.

  And the ghost answers: “No. You help me.”

  Her voice metallic, a harp of light.

  “You help me.” What does she want?

  I have asked her. I cried: “How? Tell me how.”But I cannot bear her voice and presence for very long. Her small mouth opens and closes, a cave of light. And night falls down around me like a temple of broken glass.

  What does she want? I think—

  I write left-handed. The right is bandaged: last night I put it through the window. I woke to find Sten bending over me, winding strips of a torn sheet around my hand, two tears on the burnt leather of his cheek. He told me he had tried to turn me before I reached the window, but I moved suddenly and he was too late. I told him not to blame himself. He has guarded me well on my dream walks, kept me from falling into the brazier or the fire.

  He says we are going home today.

  He is too weary to smile fully, his face a mask. Poor Sten—

  I have not opened this book for three days. I have not had the strength. But I must think. I must act, or perish. I am alone. Sten and the others have gone back to the islands without me.

  Some buried part of me suspected the truth. A hidden intuition whispered: “She will not let you get away.” I ignored it. I concentrated on the coming voyage, on our plans for keeping my ailment secret until we arrived in Tyom. I was to board the ship wrapped in a cloak—for I know that my face reflects my suffering, and I appear to have aged ten years in as many days. Sten would take me quickly into the hold. We did not reveal my condition to the other servants, for fear that the tale of my haunting would reach the captain.

  It was when Sten asked me what Olondrians think of ghosts, and how they manage in such cases, that I realized I did not know. Indeed, to my knowledge there is no word in Olondrian for “ghost.” There is only the word nea, which means “angel.”

  And so we resolved to take no chances. There are few Kideti captains who would willingly allow a ghost on board, and I assumed an Olondrian captain would feel the same.

  I am not sure of this, now. But in the end I was not permitted to see for myself.

  It began in the Street of the Clocks. First, a tightness in my forehead. Then nausea, against which I clenched my teeth and prayed. Then headache, then loss of reason. Before we reached the harbor and the ship, pain cracked my mind like a pair of silver tongs.

  “No,” she said. A single word, a stab of pure and agonizing light.

  The time that followed is vague in my mind, flickering like a storm. I know that I fought to get out of the carriage. I fought Sten, my good Sten. I said: “Let me out. She’ll kill me.” These words I remember well.

  When I had come out of the carriage, she faded, and I could see again. A crowded street, curious dockworkers gathered around the scene. The horses stamped and rolled their eyes. Sten took me by the shoulders.

  Even now I cannot believe that he is gone.

  I must believe it. He is gone, and it was I, his Ekawi, who sent him away. I know that I did right. It is only a matter of weeks before the winds change and Olondrian ships stop sailing for the south. What would happen to the farm, to my mother and Jom, without Sten? He would have missed two full growing seasons had he stayed too long. He knew it, but still he tried to stay. He said: “We’ll book a new passage next week.” I told him it was no use. I s
aid: “The ghost will not let me go.”

  The ghost will not let me go. I came back to the Hotel Urloma alone. I walked through the room of white roses and down the hall. Yedov looked up from his newspaper when I entered the dining room. A cigarette before him, a glass of tea.

  I told him I was too ill to travel. He brought me here, to this room on the roof of the hotel.

  He said he had already rented my former room. He did not look at me when he spoke. He unlocked the door to a cramped stairway and led me up to this chamber, the “student’s quarters.” It stands alone on the roof. He has not used it for some time. “Students, you know,” he said, “furniture broken, strange women at all hours.” I told him yes, I saw, I understood. I was suddenly anxious for him to leave. Unsure of how much he knew. Afraid.

  “You help me.”

  I remember coming back through my beloved Bain. Passing the Street of the Saints, the Street of the Baths, where the air is perfumed with myrrh. The Street of Acacias, the Street of Red Eaves. The Street of Prince Kelva’s Mistress. The Street of Harps, populated with echoes.

  “Oh streets of my city,” writes Fodra, “how you depart when I enter you.”

  I passed the Street of the Dead, the Cemetery of Bain. Its whitewashed ramparts glitter like spun sugar. There stand the miniature homes of the dead, tiled fantasies, like houses for children.

  Beneath them Olondrian bones are falling to dust.

  Somewhere, she is like that too. She must have died here, in Olondria, in the north. She was buried, then, not burned as is our custom in the islands. She is one of the Rotted Dead.

  She must desire what all such dead desire: to be consumed. To be released.

  “You help me.”

  “Do you want me to find your body?” I screamed.

  My own voice frightened me: too harsh, too much. As I slipped into darkness, I heard swift feet downstairs. Dogs barked from a neighboring yard.

  From The Starling, a Bainish newspaper, just after the Feast of Birds:

  The Feast of Birds is over, to the relief of all upright citizens. Small fortunes were lost, glass broken, reputations irreparably soiled—but this will hardly come as news to longtime residents of the capital. What is more alarming is that, contrary to popular belief, the so-called Feast is no mere invasion, attended solely by outsiders. This writer observed, from a convenient window, a person very like Lady Olami of Bain wailing before the effigy of the Goddess.

  Such displays are proof that despite the best intentions of the Telkan, whose wisdom in the matter is undeniable, the cult of Avalei persists in its more unworthy forms, and can be expected to do so for some time. Those who thought that the Telkan’s decision to prevent the High Priestess of Avalei from attending the Feast would crush it, must admit themselves in the wrong. It seems that as long as Avalei’s priests, bulls, eunuchs, and peasant hangers-on exist, chaos will clog our streets every Month of Apples.

  But is there no solution, nothing to be done? Is our only response to be a sigh, and the sweeping of broken glass and refuse from our doorsteps? No! For it has been reported that letters are flooding the Blessed Isle, complaining of damages and requesting more guards. Respectable Bainish hearts must not lose hope! We must add our voices to the Telkan’s, until the Red and White Councils answer our demands! Citizens, make your wishes known: no more harlots’ festivals in Bain, no thieves’ holidays, no Feast of Birds!

  Letters respond in the next several issues. Agreement, approval, reports of crimes committed during the Feast. No challenge. No defense.

  The windows in the student’s quarters are all covered with boards. They must have been broken long ago. Prepared for me.

  A door leads onto the roof, where herbs and vegetables grow in pots. Sometimes I step out for air. I lock the door at night.

  A table. A candlestick so dented it looks as if it was used in a brawl. A fireplace wreathed in grinning figures, some missing a nose or a horn.

  My satchel, my books. Olondrian Lyrics, the binding stained with seawater. the Romance of the Valley, beginning to curl with use. Newspapers, pens. I have no talents, but unless my master failed, I am a decent scholar. That scholarship must serve me as sword, and shield, and friend.

  From The Lamplighter’s Companion, the Olondrian almanac and general encyclopedia, the entry on angels:

  Angels. Hallucinations.

  Once believed to be the spirits of the dead, and to possess knowledge of the Land Beyond, the angels are now understood to be merely products of human minds which have become unbalanced through illness, shock, or intrinsic abnormalities. In the days of widespread ignorance and the reign of the cult of Avalei, diseased individuals were adored as saints rather than treated and returned to health. Suffering and folly ensued. The worship of angels, like geomancy and reading the taubel, was outlawed and registered as a crime in 939.

  939. Three years after my master left Olondria.

  A fruitless trip to the Library of Bain.

  There are no books about angels. I countered my weakness with coffee and seared beef at a café and took a carriage to the great pillared edifice. How often I walked its halls in happier days! Now I clung to the banister as I climbed the stairs to the seventh floor. Here, in the Collection of the Rare and Unseen, I paged through discourses on magic and theological textbooks. Sometimes I found a word, a line, that seemed to promise discovery. “Breim may have been led to his profession by his mother, who was visited by an angel for six years.” “According to the Angel of Berodresse, as reported by his mouthpiece Gerna, there will never be a machine capable of flight.”But I found no treatises, no arguments, no explanations. Only a little white volume, Jewels from a Stone, for the Edification and Uplifting of Eager Hearts, which repeated what I had read in the Companion—there are no angels, only sick minds—and appended several prayers to restore order to the spirit.

  Even Leiya Tevorova’s autobiography was absent.

  I asked for it at the scribe’s desk on the first floor. The scribe on duty, a dark, angry-looking girl with deep red cheeks, stared at me so coldly her lashes seemed to bristle.

  What did I want with such a book?

  I told her I had heard it praised as one of the greatest prose works in the language.

  “Oh?” she said, her pen raised. “And who said so?”

  “I don’t know his name,” I said. “I met him in the spice markets.” And I turned around and left her.

  I wish my master were here.

  I wish Sten were here.

  I don’t want to be alone.

  A pile of old cotton lies before me on the table. Yedov let me have the hangings on the skeletal bed in the student’s quarters, which had fallen into rags. Each night I read till I feel the chime, the quiver in the air, that signals the ghost. Then I close my book and blow the candle out. I lock the door, force a wad of cotton into my mouth, and bind it in place with another strip to muffle my cries.

  I ask myself: How long? How long can I bear it?

  It is not only the light. The light brings pain, but the pain is not everlasting. When the force of it grows too strong, I drop into darkness. No, the pain is not the worst thing. The worst thing is the sense of wrong, like the uncovering of a crime.

  Our two worlds scrape together like the two halves of a broken bone.

  My world has changed forever, tainted by that touch. Jissavet, my countrywoman, is dead. She is now as vast as a cavern, as small as a bead on a woman’s scarf, indifferent like a landscape. She has died in the city and in the gardens and in the unnameable forests, and in all the great plains and seas of the earth her death lies like a corruption.

  She brings me images from her past, like a diabolical dowry. A window. A street.

  I writhe against them. They are not mine.

  From The Lamplighter’s Companion:

  Jewels from a Stone, for the Edification and Uplifting of Eager Hearts. A book of wisdom collected by Ivrom, Second Priest of the Stone, and published by the Imperial Press in 931. T
he book has been reprinted six times to date. Of particular interest are the chapters on the evils of luxury, idleness, and wine. The chapter on reading includes the verse “And I am helpless before thee like a child,” which is said to have made the Telkan weep.

  Ivrom, Priest of the Stone. The second to hold this holy office. Ivrom was born in Bain in 883. On the death of his predecessor, the First Priest of the Stone, in 928, he accepted the leadership of the cult at the Telkan’s request. He has published over fifty books and pamphlets explaining the wisdom of the Stone his predecessor found in the desert of Ludyanith, including the popular and influential Jewels from a Stone. A widower with one daughter, he resides with the Telkan on the Blessed Isle.

  Locked gates. Empty roads.

  Leiya Tevorova. A deranged woman and moderately gifted writer. Her preposterous autobiography, used in schools for a century after her death, was denounced by the Priest of the Stone and banned in 934.

  When I am too ill to go downstairs, Yedov brings me a bowl of soup on a tray. He never forgets me. I am grateful for this, and wary. At the sound of his foot on the stair I peel myself from the floor, clamber onto the bed, touch my head to find any bruises I must explain.